Nature Rears Her Head

Helen Fisher, PhD

Biological anthropologist, Helen Fisher, appearing on Krista Tippett's On Being show —available as a podcast, but broadcast this morning over Vermont Public Radio — certainly felt like a setup for the standard "man-bad/woman-good" narrative of most every program put out over NPR airwaves.

But biology was given us by Nature, and anthropologists are trained to study human behavior as it is — not as women might have it be. So even a female guest being prompted by a female host to agree that all the problems of modern mating fall to the failings of the men, Nature comes to the rescue.

Fisher's professional bent in life . .

1. starting as a research associate at the American Museum of Natural History, and
2. now a Senior Research Fellow at The Kinsey Institute, and
3. a Member of the Center for Human Evolutionary Studies in the Department of Anthropology at Rutgers University

. . and all of her other observations of Life along the way just would not let her veer too far from the realities of Nature.

Tippett, whose show promises "a new discovery about the immensity of our lives" each week, reveals that as a woman in her 50s, surrounded by so many wonderful single women, she just can't find men who match up. 

Proclaiming herself to be a big supporter of men, Fisher retorts that when she hears young, professional women say essentially the same thing as Tippett, she tells them that they're picky. She assures the show host, and the female audience, that there are as many amazing men out there as women.

We don't understand men, Fisher says. While we've spent decades trying to understand women, we've spent almost no time at all trying to understand men. Men are just as romantic, she says, exhorting women everywhere that "we have to get over this idea that men are fools."

Fisher meets young men in NYC all the time who think and feel — and who want to be loved. To emphasize her point, she rounds out by paraphrasing a poem by Ted Hughes: "men and women are like two feet; we need each other to get ahead."

Even in the heart of feminized NPR, broadcast on a Sunday morning to the People's Republic of Vermont, Nature rears Her head.

SEE: "This Is Your Brain on Sex" with Helen Fisher; interview On Being With Krista Tippett; April 5, 2018.